[TESTING] 10-bit, HDR and dithering improvements

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

This is experimental. You have been warned.

Over the past few weeks there have been a few of you trying HDR and 10-bit content and reporting issues with colours or slight banding. Here are some experimental test builds that will hopefully improve this situation.

Please note that this is early days; and these builds are quite experimental. I would recommend that you take a backup before installing these builds.

In this build:

  • Colourspace should now be passed for content
  • Banding when playing with 8-bit output should now be fixed

Installation:

To try these improvements, please log in via the command line, and run the following commands:

wget "https://www.dropbox.com/s/jjt87mtlyxic3l1/vero364-image-3.14.29-25-osmc.deb?dl=1" -O vero3-image.deb
wget "https://www.dropbox.com/s/bpyaqkr3azx5nsc/vero3-mediacenter-osmc.deb?dl=1" -O vero3-mediacenter-osmc.deb
sudo dpkg -i vero3-image.deb
sudo dpkg -i vero3-mediacenter-osmc.deb

If you have a 10-bit capable display; please add the following to /etc/rc.local before the exit 0 line:

echo '444,10bit' > /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr

Now reboot your system with sudo reboot

3

Might want to include method to revert :wink:

Just in case

4

AWESOME! This is working great for me. I can confirm that my receiver & TV are both receiving a 10bit signal from the Vero4k with no ill effects. I watched plenty of 10bit content and it looks considerably better now, and there isnā€™t any negative effect on 8bit content, although it does always seem to output a 10bit BT.2020 signal regardless of the bit-depth of the content (donā€™t see any problem here, just reporting everything Iā€™ve noticed. It was always 8bit before regardless of whether it was 10bit content).

2 Likes
6

Thanks for confirming.

I will now re-list the post so itā€™s publicly visible and we can get further testing

There may be other regressions, as there are a lot of upstream changes from the SoC vendor, but thatā€™s why we have a test thread after all :slight_smile:

Sam

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Actually I just noticed one thing - my harmony remote stopped working again. I didnā€™t change anything regarding that config. It was working fine as an Xbox 360 remote using lircd before the update.

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There may be breakage, but that goes with the territory. Iā€™d like to focus on the video improvements for now in this thread, but if you send me a PM we can debug this further. The latest SoC changes may have an impact on IR support.

That why weā€™re still testing :slight_smile:

Sam

1 Like
9

Thank you for this Sam, just tested and HDR looks great now. I never noticed 8-bit banding to begin with, I have to say.

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I didnā€™t really see any issues with HDR but decided to try this anyway and it messed something up.
I had a pretty fresh install and updated with this. Now on boot it wonā€™t load the NFS shares setup in fstab (seems to try to mount them before wlan is finished), and OSMC crashes one time (Sad face but restarts again) and now when I try to watch one HDR10 clip that was previously okay it clips to black and resets the display a few times, and when thereā€™s image there are red pixels scattered. Very strange.

Something I found in the logs

rc.local[390]: /etc/rc.local: 13: /etc/rc.local: cannot create /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr: Permission denied

After a few reboots the red pixel issue seems to be gone (note this was only for one file).

Is there an easy way to roll back or should I just reinstall and restore my backup?

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I donā€™t think you edited rc.local correctly; so itā€™s causing boot issues.
Please paste the output of your rc.local.

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I havenā€™t really touched it more than pasting that line:

#By default this script does nothing.
echo ā€˜444,10bitā€™ > /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr
exit 0

13

Then it sounds like the kernel didnā€™t update properly. Can you try rerunning the above commands again and paste the output?

Also: what is the output of ls -l /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr

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osmc@osmc:~/temp$ sudo dpkg -i vero3-image.deb
(Reading database ā€¦ 21343 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack vero3-image.deb ā€¦
Examining /etc/kernel/preinst.d/
Done.
Unpacking vero364-image-3.14.29-25-osmc (25) over (25) ā€¦
Examining /etc/kernel/postrm.d .
Setting up vero364-image-3.14.29-25-osmc (25) ā€¦

Hmm. There is a symbolic link /lib/modules/3.14.29-25-osmc/build
However, I can not read it: No such file or directory
Therefore, I am deleting /lib/modules/3.14.29-25-osmc/build

Hmm. The package shipped with a symbolic link /lib/modules/3.14.29-25-osmc/source
However, I can not read the target: No such file or directory
Therefore, I am deleting /lib/modules/3.14.29-25-osmc/source

Running depmod.
Examining /etc/kernel/postinst.d.
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal 3.14.29-25-osmc /boot/vmlinuz-3.14.29-25-osmc
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal-osmc 3.14.29-25-osmc /boot/vmlinuz-3.14.29-25-osmc
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/inform-updater 3.14.29-25-osmc /boot/vmlinuz-3.14.29-25-osmc
run-parts: executing /etc/kernel/postinst.d/upload-to-emmc 3.14.29-25-osmc /boot/vmlinuz-3.14.29-25-osmc
7+1 records in
7+1 records out
8056832 bytes (8.1 MB) copied, 0.596019 s, 13.5 MB/s
0+1 records in
0+1 records out
40465 bytes (40 kB) copied, 0.0365343 s, 1.1 MB/s

osmc@osmc:~/temp$ sudo dpkg -i vero3-mediacenter-osmc.deb
(Reading database ā€¦ 21677 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack vero3-mediacenter-osmc.deb ā€¦
Unpacking vero3-mediacenter-osmc (17.3.0-4) over (17.3.0-4) ā€¦
Setting up vero3-mediacenter-osmc (17.3.0-4) ā€¦
Processing triggers for mime-support (3.58) ā€¦

osmc@osmc:~/temp$ ls -l /sys/class/amyhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr
ls: cannot access /sys/class/amyhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr: No such file or directory
osmc@osmc:~/temp$

I donā€™t remember it saying those ā€œhmmā€ things the first time but perhaps somethingā€™s messed up then, and there doesnā€™t seem to be an attr that I can list :frowning:

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Typo.
Reboot and try again.

This update changes nothing with NFS. Did you recently make changes to fstab? Whatā€™s it look like?

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Rebooting

fstab just looks like

192.168.0.200:/volume1/Movies /home/osmc/Movies nfs noatime,async,nfsvers=3,nolock,local_lock=all,soft,retrans=2

which works fine now if I sudo mount -a, but it seems the wifi isnā€™t connected when he tried to connect on boot

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osmc@osmc:~$ cat /sys/class/amhdmitx/amhdmitx0/attr
444,10bit

So that part seems to be working fine now :slight_smile: Still not sure why itā€™s trying to mount NFS before wifi is done. Not a major issue but weird nonetheless

Iā€™m still having issues playing the video though. It was working fine before, so not sure whatā€™s going on.

edit: also, now upon booting the linux kernel boot text stuff is shown over the osmc background, didnā€™t use to do that either.

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Hi Martin,

Dropped you a PM in regards to your nfs issues, so the topic doesnā€™t become cross threaded.

Thanks Tom.

19

Yes - because you arenā€™t using x-systemd-automount.
Thatā€™s not related to the above changes. Your current fstab doesnā€™t wait for network.

Likely because your mount is failing on boot, because you arenā€™t waiting for network to come online.
Iā€™m sure Tom will help you out.

1 Like
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Hi and thanks, that did the trick. X-systemd solved it.
Now the shares and boot looks fine, however hdr videos are still cutting/going blank and showing red pixels :frowning: regular material works just fine